Quote by Theognis of Megara: “Wealth covers great shame.”

This blunt statement suggests that money and material possessions can often hide or distract from a person's moral failings or lack of integrity. It implies that wealth can grant a false sense of respectability, even for the undeserving.

Theognis frequently criticized the influence of wealth in his society, observing how it often superseded noble birth or virtue as a determinant of status. This quote highlights his concern about moral decay and injustice in the community.

Greek elegiac poet from Megara, active around 540–490 BCE. His surviving poems, collected in the Theognidea, address topics of aristocratic life, friendship, justice, and loss with a distinctive bitterness shaped by political exile and social upheaval. He is one of the earliest Greek poets whose work survives in substantial quantity.